(NAPS)—If the thought of saving time, trouble and money on your company’s phone service rings the bell for you, technology may bring you good news.
You can act, sound and function more like a future Fortune 500 business using the equipment you have—better.

How To Do It

For one thing, you can wed your phone system to software that helps you care for customers and empower your sales team. It can also provide sophisticated auto attendant on-hold music or messaging, record a call on demand and send you your voice mails transcribed in an e-mail.

How It Works

That’s because cloud computing can eliminate hardware and its headaches. The cloud is simply computers connected though the Internet or an intranet with the ability to reach out and retrieve data processed elsewhere by supercomputers. It’s now possible to add business voice service to the cloud—especially when it’s fine-tuned for quality and ease of use. It’s even possible to create different greetings according to the time of day and the day of week.
It works through “VoIP,” which stands for “Voice over Internet Protocol.” In other words, your phone system works over the Internet rather than over traditional phone lines.

What You Get

Other features include:
• Reports for all incoming and outgoing calls in the system
• The ability to literally link dozens of phones in dozens of places
• A dashboard that shows real-time status of co-workers
• Integration with Outlook or other calendaring
• A dial-by-name directory
• Command and control functionality from your smartphone
• You pick your phones, then plug and play with confidence.

What Others Say

In a recent Microsoft survey, 50 percent of small businesses using the cloud say it improved their bottom line.
It’s all available, without a contract, from Vocalocity.

What Else To Do

Other technologies to consider, say the experts at the U.S. Small Business Administration, include:
• Accounting software. It lets you see profits and losses at a glance and can help you design and maintain a budget.
• A calendar system
• Time-tracking software. It can help you determine which tasks result in profit and which don’t.
• E-mail management. Stream­lining all your e-mails to one account can help you stay organized.